The Prince of Wales, on Tuesday, laid the first stone
of a new .orphanage at Watford, Hertfordshire, whither the Clapton ,Orphanage, now sixty years old, intends to migrate ; and the proceedings were marked by a noteworthy incident. There was a grand lunch after the ceremony, and the instant the guests rose the ladies looking on made a rash at the Prince's plate. The pur- veyor, who, perhaps thought his spoons were in danger, interfered ; but it turned out that the ladies wanted the cherry-stones the Prince had left from his dessert. They were actually distributed one by one as relics, and one young lady, when the stones were all gone, begged and prayed for the crumbs the Royal fingers had touched. A week or twn ago the Princess of Teck had to be pro- tected in the Botanical Gardens by a cordon of police, the ladies
rushed after her in such mobs, and, according to one account, made little clutches at her dress. There is a perfection of com- bined baseness and impudence in such scenes of which only our countrymen seem capable.
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